About Us

The Duke Law School Start-Up Ventures Clinic provides legal advice and assistance to seed and early stage entrepreneurial ventures that have not yet raised significant amounts of outside capital. The clinic assists clients in a wide variety of legal matters including formation, intellectual property protection, commercialization strategies and operational issues.

“I want students to leave here with impressive practice readiness and a range of connections in the entrepreneurial community,” said Clinic Director Jeff Ward. “The path to practice as counsel to start-ups, as in-house counsel with innovative tech companies, or as a member of the firms that serve the Triangle's burgeoning entrepreneurial community is going to be shorter than ever for Duke Law students."

Clinic students provide advice and assist qualifying clients on new entity formation, founder equity and vesting, shareholder agreements, intellectual property assignment and licensing agreements, website terms and conditions, and other issues that new enterprises face in their start-up phase.